On Property

One of the (many) reasons I left American media behind all those years ago is that I don’t care about canon.

Let me explain.

Over the last couple of decades we have seen the slow creep of nerd culture into the American mainstream entertainment business. There’s nothing wrong with nerd culture. I love sci-fi and fantasy and, in fact, there is a photo of my mother and me with William Shatner taken at a Star Trek convention hanging on my wall and watching over me as I type this out. But the intricacies of canon and universes and timelines doesn’t belong in the mainstream because it’s not a helpful or meaningful way of looking at art for most of the population. It’s a way of looking at art that resonates with people who think in the literal and concrete and should be quarantined in specialized forums, panels at sci-fi conventions, and in self-published e-books.

But canon-thinking has taken over. Instead of telling a story for emotional resonance, we get stories that say nothing but slot perfectly into the canon universes gobbled up by giant multinational corporations.

Because, yes, with canon-obsession has come… “the Property”. Disney was the early adopter cordoning off large swathes of the public domain, turning fairy tales and stories that had once belonged to all of us into Properties. Sorry, Hans Christian Andersen, it’s now canon that your little mermaid is named Ariel and she has a best friend who is a lobster/crab thingy. Sorry, Harry Potter, your story will never end and you’ll just keep stringing along sucking up cultural awareness with half-assed stories about minor characters long after your creator is dead. There is a reason authors like Garth Nix never sold their works to be turned into Properties.

Ah, Properties. Look at the movie theater and just watch the parade of Properties. Reboots. Retellings. Sequels. Set in the same Universe as. Crossovers.

And all the while Americans drift away from mass culture, box office numbers are down, television viewing is down, music sales are down…

One reason I, and others like me, turned to Asian popular culture was that it didn’t have the crushing obsession with Properties. Dramas come to an end. The stories have an end. You may not like the end (looking at you Hwayugi) but it’s there.

And the music.

Japan and Korea both have very different industries but one thing in common is that they’re still making catchy songs and that those songs are sung by somebody.

Before the mass popularization of BTS in the West, for the most part, when people (women) became idol fans it was because we liked the idols. We liked their dancing, their singing, their personalities. We liked that they are human beings. Japanese idols tend to have more… distinctive features. But we like them because of the beauty marks, the long face, the snaggletooth, the strong eyebrows. It means they are human. Korean idols have a more glossy look about them but I think as fans we still connected to their humanity. We look for their beauty. Inside and out.

We also like the music. I know this is hard for some Western critics to understand but we like and feel a connection to the music. And the performances. The melding of personality and music and dance and visuals (and fan participation) is a full body art form. It’s the complete package. Seeing an idol gracefully stretch his arm out and execute a gesture perfected over hours spent in the rehearsal room. Listening to an idol adlib beautifully in concert. These are human moments. This is what idol fans--at least the idol fans I know--live for.

My point is this. What disturbs me about this recent press conference of Big Hit’s is that, reading between the lines, what I hear is a determination to turn our idols into a Property. What that means is that “Min Yoongi” is no longer a human being that we love and support as fans, whose raps delight our ears, whose selfies make us weak in the knees. “Min Yoongi” is a Property and as a Property his actions, image, everything is not his own. “Min Yoongi” just like Spider-Man or Harry Potter or Darth Vader can be played by anybody, can be dropped into anything.

This is not what I signed up for as an idol fan.

And I can guarantee this is not what the members of BTS signed up for.

To remove the human being from his own name and face and image and voice?

Idol groups do dramas all the time, yes, but those dramas generally have the group all playing characters. The idol persona usually influences the character but there is that line of separation. And those dramas end.

What Big Hit is proposing is taking this Bangtan AU they’ve created, which already blended the members real names and personas in uncomfortable ways, and removing the members as human beings from it while keeping them as Properties within it. How the fuck is this ethical? HOW CAN FANS SUPPORT THIS?

And, the money question, how does Big Hit not see this collapsing spectacularly?

Like I said, idol fans like idols because they are human beings. If you remove the human element, what’s left? An empty vessel. A Property. And, okay, sure you can snag some of the American/Western fanbase obsessed with Properties but why would you want to when American engagement with mass culture is trending down??? There is a reason BTS (and K-pop) made an impression on American music industry and it’s because the groups were offering something American artists no longer did… and now you want to leave that behind to become the kind of thing that Americans are disengaging with? On what planet does that make sense? Well, the planet we’re swiftly headed towards where I predict a future of bickering over casting choices for the new Bangtan reboot set in Los Angeles are diverse enough and, omg, did they really just cast a white guy as “Min Yoongi”???

Imagine a young Min Yoongi, fresh from Daegu, he’s been scammed out of his songs by unscrupulous men just because he wants to be a rapper so badly because he has shit to say. Now, what if he wasn’t just scammed out of his songs but out of his very face, his name, his identity?

(Originally posted August 22, 2019)